You remember the kid in school who didn't smell so good and was never clued in. Perhaps you remember the kid who was a little too loud and didn't seem to care that everyone thought he was a little obnoxious. Perhaps you were that kid.

You also remember the kids in school that seemed to know how to act to stay popular. In fact, they seemed to understand the game so well that they couldn't do anything that would make them diminish in the eyes of everyone else.

There is something about being self-aware... knowing your limits and knowing when to push them.

Social media today is a similar phenomenon. Sometimes, companies just get it. They jump on the social media bandwagon and intuitively understand how to interact. Others have a hard time just getting started let alone maintaining a social media presence.

The reality is, getting started is the hard part. There may be times when you feel like you are posting status updates or tweeting to an empty room. Just when you feel like you aren't getting anywhere, it's time to take a step back and look in the social media mirror.

Here are a few key areas to look at when making sure that you are aware of yourself on social media. Ask yourself the following questions about your brand:

Who is your company?

This is more than just what are your products and what do you sell. Ask yourself what your company stands for? How do you want to be known?

What makes your company different?

What makes you really stand out from your competitors? Don't just assume you know but really discover what makes you different. How are you incorporating this into your social media content, sharing, and engagement?

Are you reactive or proactive?

Do you just post social content at the spur of the moment or do you think about it first? If you have an end goal in mind from your social media participation think about it before you post. You need to be more proactive and not just post because the moment strikes you.

Have asked others to rate you?

Take the opportunity to ask others (those you trust) to tell you how you are doing. The reality is, you'll never be as self-aware as you think you'll be. Ask people you trust to tell you where you make mistakes and actively work to improve.

Bottom Line

Social media for business takes time because it requires some forethought and a bit of self-awareness. When you take the time to understand who you are and what you stand for, participating in social media for your business will be that much easier.

In 2003, Delicious (then called del.icio.us) was founded and coined the term social bookmarking. Even though the concept had been around for some time, Delicious pioneered the concept of tagging the links allowing for easy categorization of your bookmarks.

If you aren't familiar with the idea of social bookmarking you might be familiar with some of the websites that provide this service.

Today, arguably the most popular social bookmarking site is Pinterest. But, historically, depending on the audience, others that have been (and continue to be) popular include StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit.

A social bookmarking site is a website that doesn't contain it's own content. Instead, it contains links to other content on the internet. Consider that the most common use for Pinterest is to pin a picture (link) from another website and then your followers will be able to click through to see that link.

Social bookmarking allows you to get your content out to multiple audiences in multiple ways. Depending on the type of post and the audience your bookmark is submitted to, you will find that different social media platforms (including social bookmarking sites) will generate different levels of traffic. Moreover, other people will re-post your links if they really like it at different rates depending on the platform.

As you consider social bookmarking for increasing your traffic and SEO, you'll want to make sure that you don't avoid the more mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. You'll likely still get more traffic from those sources so don't forget about them.

When you are submitting pages of your website to social bookmarking websites you want to make sure that you keep everything relevant. Don’t submit every page of your website to Digg or spam irrelevant links to Reddit. The best way to utilize social bookmarking sites is to utilize relevant content on your website. Say you have a blog post that is about home renovations; you could submit this to the “Home Improvement” category of StumbleUpon, or to a relevant subreddit (a subreddit is a category in Reddit) that focuses around home improvements or DIY projects.

Social bookmarking communities are very good about self-moderation. If you are pushing irrelevant content, your link will likely get deleted and your profile may be banned from posting. However, these websites have a plenty of traffic coming to them and, if the content is truly relevant, odds are it will get upvoted, shared, repinned, etc. This will bring a significant number of relevant users to your website.

Take 5 minutes and do some research as to which website(s) would be the best target for your social bookmarking efforts.

Since nearly the start of the internet, search engines have allowed searchers the ability to find cool (and not-so cool) stuff on the internet. Yahoo! was the first search engine and the search index for Yahoo! was manually created. Google provided the first automatic way to create their search index using every student dreads - math.

Because of the automated approach to creating the search index, the world of search engine optimization was born. The search engines have engineered the search results to yield the most relevant results that best benefit the user.

No one really knows the secret, inner-workings of the search algorithm except some guys in a back room with thick glasses and a pocket-protector for each day of the week (think Coca-Cola’s tremendously successful secret recipe). There are a few fundamental components of the formula that have been speculated to be accurate by plenty of gurus over the years.

The most basic thing you can do for each of the pages on your website is to get the page title right. The page title is what appears at the top of your browser window and it should indicate clearly what the particular page is all about.

You should note that the page title may or may not be the same as the title at the top of your content. This title at the top of your content is call the heading 1 or h1. When you take the time to get the page title right on the top of the page as well as the heading 1 for the content you are writing, you'll begin to optimize that page for the search engines.

Some dos for the page title:

• If you are focusing this page for a specific geography, use a geographic location along with a service that you would like to be found for (ex. Boise Rock Star).
• Separate multiple terms with the | (pipe) symbol (ex. Boise Rock Star | Cool Dude Enterprises).
• It is generally accepted that page titles should be less than 70 characters including spaces. While you can use more if you, there is speculation that more is detrimental to your search engine position.
• Page titles should be different from page to page to indicate what the page is about.
• Your page titles should be relevant to the content on your web page.

Some don'ts for the page title:

• Don't stuff your page title with just a bunch of key words. Make them understandable for the average site visitor.
• Avoid having your page titles the same on every page throughout your website.
• Don't load your page titles with so many words that they can't be seen. Think the 70 character limit.

Depending on your skill level, page titles are something that you can change within a few minutes on your website and can have a positive impact on your search rankings.

When was the last time you posted on your social media channels? I'm not talking about when you posted a picture on your personal Facebook page. I'm talking about on your company's social locations.

Too often, a business leader gets the idea that it will be important to start doing social media. They'll get the secretary to create the pages for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and perhaps a few others (Pinterest, YouTUBE, etc). They'll get the web guy to put the links on the website. They'll even take some time to post for the first week or two.

Then, the efforts will stop. Think of the Twitter accounts that started strong then just a week or two later there were suddenly no more tweets. Or, worse the accounts that simply have a bevy of automated posts. You know, when they post to one location and then have the interwebs taking care of the rest?

An inactive Facebook or Twitter page symbolizes that you simply don't care about the image of your company. If a user comes to your Facebook page in hopes of gaining a more in depth knowledge of your company or trying to find out about upcoming events but finds that the last post was made two years ago, that user will most likely not take you as seriously as another company that is maintaining an active presence on social media. Letting your social media presence wane shows lack of commitment, follow-through, and indicates you are just plain lazy.

In fact, it might be better to not have a social presence if you aren't going to maintain it.

Here are some easy status updates or tweets that can be posted in no time. These simple ideas will help keep your social media active and a good start to helping you become awesome.

1. Ask your audience a question to solicit engagement (don't forget to reply when they answer).
2. Talk about upcoming events and things your company is doing in the community.
3. Talk about new products or specials that your company is offering (don't do this exclusively or you will become a spammer).
4. Post about events in the community that everyone can enjoy (e.g. a local sporting event or a play coming to town).
5. Post pictures of company events or fun things happening in the office.

Posting something about the weather or even just saying, "Happy Friday!" will do more for your online brand than not posting at all. Remember, there is a huge difference between being on Facebook or Twitter and actually being active on social media.

Don’t let your online brand suffer from an inactive social media presence.

Perhaps you are new to Twitter or you've started seeing these strange #tags on your Facebook profile since Facebook finally started using them. Maybe you've never heard of hashtags or perhaps you are just confused about how to use them correctly.

Here is a quick background on hashtags and their purpose.

The # (pound) symbol, called a hashtag in social media, is traditionally used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. Twitter users created it as a way to call special attention to certain keywords in their tweets.

Now, Facebook is also using the hashtag.

• People use the hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their tweet to categorize those tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. E.g. Here is how you use a #hashtag.
• Clicking on a hashtag in any message in Twitter and Facebook shows you all other tweets or status updates marked with that keyword.
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the post – at the beginning, middle, or end.
• Hashtags that become very popular in Twitter are often trending topics.
• Don't #spam #with #hashtags. Don't over-tag a single tweet or update. (Best practices recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per post.)
• Don't hashtag bomb. In other words, don't use a hashtag to pitch your message on a trending topic.
• Use hashtags only on posts relevant to the topic. (see previous bullet)
• Hashtags are for keywords and not words of emphasis or emotion. Good: I heart #narwhals - They make me feel gooey inside. Bad: I heart #narwals - #theymakemefeelgooeyinside. Worst: I #heart #narwhals - #they #make #me #feel #gooey #inside #lol.
• Hashtag is not an appropriate name for your newborn.

While hashtags did start on Twitter and now Facebook has joined the fray, some other social platforms have taken notice. A couple of them, such as Google+, Instagram and Flickr use a form of hashtags. I'm sure that more will jump on as they continue to increase in popularity.

Last year, I wrote "Tweet It Right: A CEO's Guide to Twitter" because I've had so many conversations with leaders in organizations that simply don't get the 'why' of Twitter.

Getting started on Twitter can feel like a daunting challenge. It can especially be a struggle if you haven't taken the time to become familiar with twitter.com. If you intend your brand to have a presence on Twitter, then you must take the necessary steps to complete your profile.

This is true for your personal Twitter page as well as your company or organization page. If you aren't telling people who you are properly, you'll find that those that follow you don't matter and you'll have less influence than you think.

Below are the first four items that you should take care of in regards to properly branding your Twitter account. If you take the time to do this when you set up your account at first then you should be set. However, too many people often don't.

• Profile Photo: Your profile image should be immediately identifiable with your brand, and can be your logo or some variation of your logo. Dimensions for your Twitter logo should be 73 pixels x 73 pixels.
• Bio: Your bio is the first thing you want people to know about your brand. You get 160 characters to introduce your brand to the world.
• Header Photo: Header photos are the newest introduction to branding on Twitter. Twitter recommends a ratio of 2 to 1, (e.g. 626 x 1252). Files cannot be larger than 5MB. Because your profile photo and bio are in the header, this one is not as important as the others; not as important if the rest of your profile is set up well.
• Background Photo: Your background photo can be used in a number of ways, including sharing additional information about your brand or sharing a strong image that you feel represents your brand. Make sure you use something unique and not one of the stock backgrounds that Twitter provides.

Understand that failing to set up your Twitter profile can signal potential followers that you look like a spammer. It may cause people to ignore or block you.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to properly utilizing twitter. Don’t be afraid to dive in and start tweeting!

Cover photos are a relatively new addition to Facebook. Whether you are talking about your personal profile or your business page, your cover photo is an important indicator to your audience about who you are.

What does your cover photo tell about your company? Sometimes you might want to simply show off your location so people know what you look like when they come to your office. Sometimes you want to show off a bit of your personality. Hopefully you don't want to show off how much you want to sell by displaying product information or messages about how great you are.

Feel free to even get a little creative with your cover photo. You don't have to limit yourself to just a simple photo. It can be something that really showcases who you are. You can even allow your profile image to interact with the main image.

Here's a sample of what I mean:

So, how do you do it? The first step is to make sure your cover photo has the correct dimensions. Your cover photo should be 851px wide by 315px tall. Make sure to leave the space where your profile image overlays the cover photo open.

Often times, the more simple the image you chose the better. A photo of your staff or your location is a good start. Showing off your brand in a way that showcases your personality is even better. Sometimes it takes a little time to choose the right image but don't be afraid to get a little create.

Also, feel free to change it up on occasion. You don't have to set it and forget it.

Additionally, there are a few standards for cover photos that Facebook does enforce. If you violate these policies you'll risk getting your page suspended.

Cover photos may not include:

1. More than 20% text.
2. Price or purchase information.
3. Contact information.
4. References to Facebook features or actions, such as Like or Share.
5. Calls to action.

Get creative and create a cover photo that demonstrates how cool you really are.